Lord Triesman addressed the Leaders in Football conference with grave news about the financial state of the English game. Photograph: Andrew Coulridge

The Football Association chairman Lord Triesman today added English football to the list of industries facing mounting debts because of the global credit crisis. In a speech at the Leaders in Football conference, Triesman revealed the game was £3bn in the red and needed forceful action to prevent the problem getting worse.

"The best estimate I could get in the City yesterday was that debts in English football as a whole have probably edged to the £3,000m mark," said Triesman, before adding that in 2006-07 the Deloitte group identified more than £950m of debt in the top four clubs alone, with wages growing at 12% a year.

He claimed that such "toxic debt" could cause massive damage to the game and called for a review of the fit and proper persons test in order to make football club ownership more transparent.

"Transparency lies in an unmarked grave," he said. "Nobody has real confidence in what they cannot see. The fit and proper persons test does not do the job sufficiently robustly. A review is now inevitable because football clubs are not mere commodities. They are the abiding passion of their supporters. We forget that at our peril."

However he would not be drawn on Thaksin Shinawatra's sale of Manchester City nor on the problems facing West Ham and their Icelandic owner Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, whose country's banking system is in peril.

Triesman also targeted the England team, calling for the country's "historic underachieving" at international level to be remedied. He also expressed concern that the rise of foreign players in England was damaging the national side's chances.

"We need our senior men's team to do well and in Fabio Capello and the players I'm sure we have that capacity," he said. "But that capacity has certain limits and we need to acknowledge that the number of eligible England players is declining too far too fast.

"England fans rightly demand more and they want it now or at least in very near future. England can't be like an aircraft carrier in which largely foreign fighters take off, however brilliant their engineering."

Meanwhile Triesman has also claimed that Tottenham Hotspur should ban for life the supporters who recently verbally abused Sol Campbell. "I abhor the treatment of Sol Campbell by supporters of a club that I have loved and supported all my life," he said. "I hope the individuals will be identified and, if appropriate, banned from Tottenham's ground."

"The supporters responsible have let their club down in a way that is totally unacceptable. I wouldn't have them in the ground again."